


i think you made me this

by elliptical



Series: unbecoming jordan hennessy [8]
Category: Dreamer Trilogy - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canonical Character Death, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Drunk Driving, Everything is awful, Hennessy Is Her Own Content Warning, Substance Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:00:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28059594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elliptical/pseuds/elliptical
Summary: “Tell me you borrowed this car from a friend,” Jordan said.“Liberated it,” Hennessy replied, and laughed like a dying walrus.  “Communism fucks.”
Relationships: Octavia (Dreamer Trilogy) & Hennessy (Dreamer Trilogy)
Series: unbecoming jordan hennessy [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2052732
Kudos: 10





	i think you made me this

Octavia woke under a bridge, nose-deep in a muddy shore that smelled like human feces. Probably because of all the human feces in the slow-moving sludge beside her. This “river” was barely removed from a sewer. She scrubbed the grit from her lips with her shirt, gagging in disgust. 

She woke alone with Hennessy, and dark fingers of orange-polluted night stretched overhead. There were no witnesses to the damnation-miracle. None that mattered, anyway. A homeless man on the opposite bank stared at them, bleary and confused, his head slowly turning from side to side as though to dispel an illusion.

Octavia didn’t consider him a threat. Nobody heard the homeless, the lost, the mentally ill. Nobody _believed_ them. Neurochemistry played rude scales on the brain; if the man had an ounce of sense, he’d blame his faulty wiring and move on. 

Octo herself slotted neatly enough among the unreliable narrators. If she informed a meaningless hookup that her body had been forged inside a dream, he’d Google her blueprint’s name, and he’d find their mother’s history. He’d click his tongue over the tragic, artistic, inevitable plight of the flighty manic-depressive. He’d keep fucking her, of course, but only when she managed not to cry or rage or rant or dig her lacquered fingernails into his squishy squishy eye sockets.

Of course, in her head, the hookup was a patronizing undergrad who’d attended a single college psych course eighteen months before. He found himself fascinated by the sheer concept of her: by the intrigue, the allure, the presence, the fresh perspective. This was the pretentious academic’s way to say _please please please let me fuck the crazy out of you, I don’t love my mother and I don’t love my girlfriend and I miss human warmth but I hate human need, please please please be a manic off-the-wall psycho bitch who only exists to accommodate my fantasies so I never have to think again._

This derision was both fresh enough and specific enough in Octo’s mind for her to paint a pretty solid mental picture of how Hennessy had spent last weekend.

She sat up and stretched. The body was too new for wear-and-tear, but her joints popped anyway. Shoulders, neck, knuckles, back. She sighed, relaxing.

Aside from waking up facedown in a shitpit, she felt... good. This body felt good. Or, no, maybe good wasn’t the right term. She felt _awake._

Energy crackled up her spine. She’d just woken from a refreshing hundred-year slumber; she’d win an impromptu marathon without training. The sensation wasn’t good, exactly, not yet. It wasn’t bad, either. It was just untapped potential, a neutral force, a wellspring of light. The kinetic jitters under her skin might _become_ something good, if she molded them right. Or they might become something catastrophic, if she molded them wrong.

“Wake up, asshole,” she told Hennessy. “Night’s wasting.”

Hennessy didn’t move. She usually didn’t after a dream, Octavia knew, though she wasn’t sure where the knowledge came from. 

All the same, Hennessy looked... wrong. Wrong in ways that normal sleepers didn’t. Her body was a ruin of black, mouth coated in the tarry substance, limbs splayed at odd angles like a broken doll. Octo prodded at her cheek, watching the skin spring back. Little pinpricks of blood oozed out like perspiration. Octavia watched her chest to make sure she breathed; she didn’t know how long she’d stay awake if Hennessy bit the dust.

“Rise and shine,” Octavia tried.

Hennessy’s brow furrowed. Her eyelids fluttered. Her expression, when she managed to conrol her twitching facial muscles, slowly settled into wariness. Her eyes darted around the scummy area like a trapped cat planning escape.

Octavia found the whole performance funny. After all, Hennessy had clearly picked her dreaming place. Home shit home, a reeking sludge pit filled with trash, bums, and wayward girls.

“You know what I want?” Octo said, and smiled, wide. “Cocaine. Let’s go get some fucking cocaine.”

Cocaine wasn’t one of Hennessy’s more frequent vices, but it also wasn’t difficult to acquire, given their endless array of unsavory contacts. After the meetup - during which Hennessy exchanged an ungodly amount of cash for an ungodly amount of coke - the two girls wandered the industrial sector surrounding Octavia’s birthplace-bridge. 

A gleaming Challenger beckoned from one fenced lot, parked amidst a dozen other abandoned vehicles. They half-ran to it, stumbling over their own feet, braced against each other to stay upright. Octavia did five lines off the hood and then leaned against the door, her heart pounding, her head spinning. With the crusts of white under her nose, she and Hennessy nearly matched. Angel of darkness, angel of light. Demon of heaven, demon of hell.

The drugs were a gamble. Cocaine would make the episode really good or really, really bad. Game of chance, game of luck. Winning meant winning _big,_ and losing - well. Octavia liked the risk. She liked the high, the dive, the speed, the feeling of riding an angry ocean swell.

“It’s Russian roulette,” she said aloud, and grinned.

Hennessy blinked over the hood of the car. “Come again?”

Tragic that Hennessy couldn’t read Octo’s mind when they were supposed to be the same person. “Mania, cocaine, Adderall, the whole nine. Russian roulette. Good, not good, good, not good, spin the chamber. Pulling daisy petals, too - ‘loves-me-loves-me-not’ - _fuck_ me, I am all over the fucking place. Let’s go for a ride.”

Since nobody had wandered by while Octo did hard drugs on a random stranger’s property, the risk of further consequences seemed minimal. They hotwired the Challenger. The parking lot was a brine-smelling space on the city outskirts, no clubs or restaurants or bars in sight, and the area lacked the buzz of machinery that often permeated the day.

Octo slid into the driver’s seat, the engine rumbling like a panther. Hennessy leaned against the passenger side window, her eyes half-lidded, flakes of crusted black ooze smearing over the glass. She’d sat like that for five minutes already, after she’d abandoned the wiring with a simple, “I’m tired.” 

And left the work to Octavia. Of course. 

Bitch.

She still looked bad, though better than she had below the bridge. Closer to a wasted anxious addict than a hospital patient halfway to the morgue. She’d done a few lines off the dashboard, the powder residue dusted like snowflakes. Octavia had the capacity to fake concern, but she didn’t want to. She didn’t much care if Hennessy was in pain. 

She _did_ care about Hennessy snapping out of her fucking funk. The girl needed to pull herself together. Octo was here for a good time and a good time only, and cleaning up a half-dead has-been’s vomit wasn’t fucking _fun._

Wheeling around the industrial lot entertained Octavia for about thirty seconds. Then she gunned the engine and peeled out. “Let’s go have some _real_ fun.”

Hennessy raised her head, and her vicious mean-girl smile was the only encouragement Octavia needed.

They tore through downtown, careening around corners and blowing through red lights and enlivening empty intersections. They stole a six-hundred-dollar bottle of whiskey from a neon-lit 24-hour liquor store, a feat made more impressive because there were no other shoppers for camouflage. The apathy of the late-shift employees cancelled out the scrutiny of solitude. They piled back into the car and burned rubber through the other side of downtown, trawling for potential races. Few fellow adventurers could be found at ass o’clock on a weekday, much to their disappointment. When the novelty of the engine’s roar wore off, they camped in the back of a Walmart parking lot and passed the booze back and forth across the gearshift. 

It was probably good alcohol, given the price tag, so Octavia was drinking to puke. This was a vital principle: The more expensive the booze was, the funnier puking became. It wasted all of that crafted decadence like a college girl chugging beer for the first time. It let the alcohol do to her body what it wanted to, instead of trying to stomach it all alone. Much better than letting the bottle sit untouched on a shelf for a half century.

There was a stretched-out moment where the coke and booze interacted in the _worst_ fucking way. Sweat broke out on Octavia’s temples, droplets beading the back of her neck. Dizziness swept over her in a wave, and heat, so she pressed her face to the cool car glass. Her heart thudded erratically, like it couldn’t remember its rhythm. A moan climbed up her throat.

Then she opened the door and leaned out and vomited all over the fucking pavement, and she felt about a million percent better.

Hennessy laughed as Octo shut the door, long and loud and genuinely gleeful. “Weak. Better work harder if you want to match the pros. My liver’s been through a paper shredder and I’ve _still_ got you beat.”

Octavia wasn’t offended. She rested her head against the seat, closing her eyes. 

“Let’s go,” she said. “Let’s just go.”

Hennessy yawned. “Where?” 

Not ‘what.’ Not ‘why.’ There was no need for those queries, not if they truly shared the same brain. Hennessy already knew the why. Hennessy had gifted Octo the what.

“Who fucking cares? Let’s go.”

Hennessy blinked, slow. The dream’s violence remained imprinted on her blood-speckled skin, and alcohol blurred her gaze, but her pupils were still stimulant-huge. “I _like_ you,” she said.

Octavia grinned. “Good. You’d better.”

In that moment, she had every intention of finding an interstate ramp, fucking off into the wild blue yonder, and abandoning all of their baggage. But she accidentally mounted the curb as she attempted to exit, jolting the carriage so violently that Hennessy whined with pain. She smacked the curb several more times as she reversed, shifted, steered right, drove forward, reversed, shifted, steered left, reversed, shifted, finally disentangled the wheels, and aimed once again for the exit. 

This escape attempt lasted only five seconds. The road signs swam before her eyes; she couldn’t distinguish the incoming and outgoing traffic lanes. 

It was possible that she was too drunk to drive.

“Fucking faery labyrinth,” she muttered. Defeated, she parked the car diagonally across four spaces and shoved the seat all the way back. “We’ll disappear soon, have no fear. But first, a catnap.”

That was how Jordan and June found them: wasted, high, drunk, and semiconscious inside a stolen vehicle. Quite a picture they must have painted. Bad influences. Burnouts. Cautionary tales. Don’t end up like those girls.

“I told you,” June said, muffled. She was not talking to Octo, but Octo rolled down the window to listen.

Jordan sighed. “It _was_ a good thought,” she replied, grudgingly, as though she’d conceded an argument.

Hennessy’s eyes cracked open. She still hadn’t wiped away the ooze, and Octo was still in her arrival outfit, but otherwise they were indistinguishable. Octavia wondered whether she’d be able to pass as Hennessy under Jordan’s all-seeing gaze.

Jordan crossed to the passenger window and tapped, so Octo rolled that down too. Hennessy draped her arm over the door, leaning toward the fresh air with a lazy grin. 

“Tell me you borrowed this car from a friend,” Jordan said.

“Liberated it,” Hennessy replied, and laughed like a dying walrus. “Communism fucks.”

“And if you’d gotten pulled over?”

Hennessy waved a hand, as if the question didn’t interest her. Certainly it didn’t interest Octavia. She didn’t like the snooty, put-upon tone or the haughty superiority in Jordan’s stance. As if it was anyone’s fucking business what she or Hennessy did with their time.

“Chill out, party pooper,” Octo said. “Sorry about the stick up your ass. Get well soon. We had fun.”

The twin glares from Jordan and June could have leveled cities. Whatever. They weren’t Octavia’s problem. 

“Well,” June spat, “I’m so glad you two had _fun._ ”

Hennessy lifted her hand, beckoning toward Jordan as if to share a secret. When Jordan leaned into the cabin, Hennessy snagged her around the neck and pulled her close. It might have been affectionate, if not for the car door between them and the deeply awkward angle of Jordan’s spine. “How’d you find me?” Hennessy asked, resting her chin on Jordan’s head.

Jordan spluttered, indignant, and wrenched herself back. She smoothed down her shirt as if brushing out cat hair. Then she sighed, opening the car door and offering a hand. “Tracked your phone. C’mon.”

“Tracked my-” 

All the mellow affection vanished. Hennessy straightened, her lip curling, her teeth bared. Her rage mirrored Octavia’s, though she must have been too wasted to throw a punch. “How?”

“I installed a program months ago while I reset your timer,” June said dispassionately. “Oh, _don’t_ pretend _you’ve_ been wronged. We have to go. Before someone sees us.”

Octo thought that she could throw a punch just fine.

She held herself back only because she’d have to finish the shit she started. That didn’t mean she’d forgiven the transgression. Tracking Hennessy’s phone, stalking her movements, dragging the pair of them away when they’d gotten so close to escape - that was the worst thing anyone had ever done to Octavia. The worst thing anyone would ever do.

Jail wardens, the lot of them. Hennessy’s keepers. Arrogant, touchy, judgmental pieces of shit. They condescended from their hypocritical thrones, making villains out of Hennessy and Octavia alike, because it was apparently a crime to feel good.

Octo made no secret of the distaste. “Don’t fucking touch me,” she hissed at Brooklyn, shoving away the girl’s offered hand. Standing unassisted wasn’t easy. She stumbled. Brooklyn just stood where she was, watching, making no renewed attempt to help. 

Octo’s vision tinged red. “Don’t look at me like that. Like you’re so much better than me, you fucking slut.” 

Brooklyn didn’t speak to her again.

“It’s not my fault your only character trait is ‘Daddy Didn’t Love Me,’” she told Madox when the other girl snuck inside with bloody knuckles and a split lip. “Wah, wah, we’ve all been so fucking wronged. Don’t bleed on my shit. It’s designer.”

Madox stopped speaking to her, too.

When June picked a fight, Octavia was ready. June always found some fucking issue with her. That night, she’d been too careless with her identification or her route home or her fuckbuddies or her schedule or blah blah blah blah blah.

“Track my phone about it,” Octo sneered. “It’s cute, your whole thing. I love watching the frigid ice bitch play group mommy. Is that filling the hole in you?”

June hit her. That was fucking amazing; Octo hadn’t seen it coming. Even better, the blow offered the shield of self-defense. Octo had been itching to fight forever. She unleashed every single bit of murderous rage under her ribs, and June matched her fury step for step, dancers hellbent on destruction. They became a whirling frenzy of ragged nails and snapping teeth and torn-out hair and shredded clothing. They brawled across the overgrown back garden, until Octo slammed June’s head against the ground and pinned her arms with her knees. She seized a thorny branch from the piled debris, and she raked it hard across June’s face.

She nearly blinded June’s right eye in the process. It was only luck that the corneal scratch healed.

Jordan involved herself then, like she always fucking did. Blinding Your Roommates Is Bad, she told Octavia, even more smug and entitled and holier-than-thou than the fucking ice princess.

Octavia shrugged. “She started it.”

Jordan watched her for a long moment. “What can I do to help?” she asked. “Clearly you’re hurting.”

Those words. Those fucking words. Octavia couldn’t explain why they ripped through her skull, why the red mist returned, why she wanted Jordan’s broken body to bleed out at her feet. She took a step back to keep Jordan out of reach, to keep her claws sheathed. Just in case.

“Aw,” she said, and smiled. “Is that how you’re going to be? I love the angle. You’re the sweetest. Most decent people with your body count would just kill themselves, but you’ve spun gold from the guilt. Here you are. Shit sucks. They’ll still be dead tomorrow, honey. You still didn’t ask them whether they were okay when it mattered. And now you’re nosing around in my business when I’m perfectly fine. Be careful how you help, okay? Turns out you were a common denominator all along. Maybe you drove them to it. Food for thought.”

Jordan stood very still. She didn’t lash out like June had, or silently leave like Brooklyn, or ignore her like Madox. She pressed her hands against her thighs, but not fast enough to hide their shaking. Her mouth crumpled, like a slow-motion car wreck, and a single tear trickled down her cheek.

So Octo’s work here was done.

Hennessy was the only one who would understand. Octavia sought her out, longing for the companionship they’d shared that first night, aching to be rid of this mansion and this family and these ghosts.

“Piss off,” Hennessy said, once Octo finally found her in a labyrinthine corner of the basement. She blew a stream of smoke into the air. She did not offer a cigarette.

“It’s me,” Octavia said.

“Who?”

“Come the fuck off it. I’m you.”

Hennessy unfolded herself from her smoking chaise, stretching. “I’m not like _you,_ ” she said with a laugh. “Leave me the fuck alone. Go on back to playgroup.”

Because it wasn’t the two of them. It wouldn’t ever be. Octo had made no impression; she’d had the same factory-assembled body, the same mirrored thoughts, the same manic impulses. One more identical knockoff added to the bouquet.

“So that’s how it’s going to be,” Octavia said.

Hennessy’s voice was toneless. “Go get your homebaked validation somewhere else. I’m not your fucking guidance counselor.”

“You don’t give a fuck about me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” Hennessy puffed on the cigarette, burning it down to the filter. As if surprised to find Octavia still present, she said, “I don’t give a fuck about them, either.”

Octavia smiled. The expression froze on her face, a plaster mask. “Good,” she said, and turned to leave. “Then I’m hitting the road. You won’t miss me.”

The sharpness of Hennessy’s voice jerked her back. “ _What did you just say?_ ”

Surely _this_ couldn’t be the straw to break the camel’s back. Hennessy knew why the fuck Octavia was leaving. She sure as hell wasn’t needed here, and she sure as hell didn’t have reason to stay.

“I said,” Octavia repeated, enunciating each syllable like a whipcrack, “I am hitting the _fucking_ road. And _you won’t miss me._ ”

Hennessy’s breath wavered, uncertain, a vulnerability telegraphed across the dusty silence. Octavia didn’t understand what it meant.

Then Hennessy lit another cigarette, and the spell was broken, and she was exactly the same horrible bitch she’d always been. “No,” she said, “I sure won’t.”

Octavia turned and left. She had an appointment with a liquor cabinet and an underground pharmacy, and there was no one left to get in her fucking way.

She was dead by the time the rooster crowed.


End file.
